


My Sweetheart Was a Gambler

by human_wreckage



Category: Suicide Squad (2016)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-07-29 15:05:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7689199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/human_wreckage/pseuds/human_wreckage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because Floyd Lawton will always be a father first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Sweetheart Was a Gambler

The eleven-year-old girl who stood between her father's gun and the man who posed a threat to his freedom was a brave girl indeed. She couldn't bear to watch him kill the justice that had been at his heels perhaps the entirety of her life. It was more simple in her mind. Batman or her father going to jail? Wouldn't he go to jail for longer if he pulled the trigger? She jumped in front of him with little hesitation, and she could see the breaking emotion in his eyes. He would never shoot her, but he would hurt her if he pushed her aside and killed the Batman. He would hurt her innocence. She would witness the cold-blooded murderer stashed in her father. So he put his gun down and surrendered. She hugged his neck and cried her eyes out, knowing it might be a long, long time before she saw her father again. The police put her father in a car, and the government put him behind bars, but her father was still a man to her, and not a monster. She could live with that.

  

* * *

    

For most of eleven years, life was about being a father. Being a provider. And the best he could do, the best he could provide for his daughter was killing. Assassinations were his service, and though the service was dirty, pay was good. Not that he spent much time dwelling on the heaviness of his soul, or those in similar situations, but people prostituted themselves every day in various other ways, using whichever body part bought the highest price; for sex, for their voice, for their face, for their brain, for their hands, for their feet, people prostituted themselves. He used his hands and his eyes and his expertise with marksmanship and went home knowing that his child would be fed and clothed. Was that any different—really—than a businessman or a fast-food worker? His dreams for Zoe had been growing larger, and he could curse the man who caught him and cut those dreams down. Batman should have caught a bullet between his eyes. He punched the bag in his cell and thought that over and over again.

   

* * *

   

Flag realized that Deadshot was a good man about the time he was told he'd be getting to June, even if Deadshot had to drag him there. A "good man" was the wrong terminology, though. Deadshot was a good father. He made sacrifices for his daughter. He tried at every turn to better her life. And when he couldn't procure those things which would, he asked to see her. He helped her with her math homework. The man was devoted. The man who could kill a platoon of the Enchantress' charging creatures on his own was a good father, and whether the world knew that or not, his daughter did. Had Waller not put the chip in Deadshot, and met his demands for his daughter, Flag thought that the man would have completed any mission she tasked him with. Flag hoped that if he had kids, he would sacrifice at least as much as an assassin would for his own.

    

**Author's Note:**

> I saw Suicide Squad today and I basically couldn't villanize Deadshot. He's a dad.


End file.
